Spotlight on Women Directors: Tulips & Chimneys
As part of a regular series with Free The Bid Australia, Campaign Brief shines the spotlight on top female commercials directors in Australia and New Zealand…
Inspiring audiences with stories and art is what the team at Tulips and Chimneys are best at.
They are represented by Passion Pictures in the APAC region.
Three best spots:
1. Amumu ‘Curse of the sad Mummy‘
2. Cerebos
Whether they’re designing a bohemian princess, a wacky vegetable or an outlandish pirate, they always take great care to ensure that their stories and unique characters are beautifully depicted.
Led by best friends and co-founders; Ree Treweek and Nina Pfeiffer, together they have been making beautiful art for over 11 years.
Both women started in unlikely places; Nina began her career juggling her time between a theatre company, an animation studio and studying medicine. She eventually realised that this schedule was not sustainable and that ultimately her passion lay in the beautiful visuals of her medical books and her understanding of how a body animates. This made the choice to permanently move to design and animation an easy one.
While Nina was making her journey from doctor to producer; Ree was finishing her studies in fine art and made the decision to move to Cape Town. Shortly after arriving she met a new group of friends and they decided to try their hands at making a short film.
Much to their surprise, this first effort; Tale of How, won several competitions on the international film circuit for the next two years, including best short film at the Annecy Animated Film Festival, which is akin to the Oscars of animation.
On the back of this exposure it soon became apparent, through multiple commissions, that it was possible to create a livelihood in animation. Mutual friends introduced Ree and Nina and so began the start of their journey.
Today, Tulips and Chimneys is a globally recognised concept design and animation studio that executes projects in a variety of mediums from screen to print to VR. Both Ree and Nina continue to lead the studio and are actively involved in all projects, crafting and bringing to life complex and striking new worlds.
Ree loves: to create surreal fantasy worlds and tales. Getting to know the characters and how they interact with the worlds they live in is an adventure on its own. Ree explores these world through animation, sculpture and illustration.
Nina loves: anything that has a bit of humour and lots of character action or emotion in. It’s especially fun to get the my co-workers in the studio act out the character’s performance, I just love that it’s a bit flawed and not so perfect as when an animator just animated from a perfect reference.
Contact EP of New Business Kate Goodwin kateg@passion-pictures.com.
Since launching a year ago, Free The Bid has 200 Australian Women Directors on its searchable database. Free The Bid now has over 20 major agencies that use the database to find the right director for each of their projects and have committed to putting one female director in the mix for every job.
1 Comment
these girls are so talented. Followed them since they were The Blackheart Gang and released their amazing short ‘The Tale of How’. Super talents